Sustainable Development and the Future of Cities

Between 1991 and 1994, four International Summer Seminars on
Sustainable Development and the Future of Cities were organized at the
Bauhaus Dessau, Germany. Close to 160 participants from more than seventy
countries of all world regions, from all age groups between 19 and 79,
from many disciplines, professions and career phases worked together.
The seminar series was a part of the cooperation programme between the
Bauhaus and the Centre for European Studies, Trier University. The
programme received financial support from UNESCO, from the German
Commission for UNESCO, from the German Federal Ministry for Education and
Science, the Friedrich Ebert-Foundation, the Bauhaus, and a number of
other sources. The first seminar (1991) emphasized problems of public
planning capacity; the second (1992) discussed problems of global
economics and their impacts on urban and regional areas; the third (1993)
covered practical strategies of implementing sustainable development
policies; and the fourth (1994) was on specific cultural and historical
aspects of urban sustainability. Almost all the material collected for
this volume has been presented and discussed at these seminars.

Contents

IntroductionBernd Hamm and
Pandurang K. Muttagi

Part IConcepts, Theories, Problems

Understanding Sustainable DevelopmentWilliam E. Rees

Sustainable Development - A Third World PerspectiveP.K.
Muttagi

Sustainability Problems and Historical Transitions - A Description
in Terms of Changes in Metabolism and Colonization StrategiesMarina Fischer-Kowalski and Helmut Haberl

The New Politics of Environmental Governance: Sustainable
Development on the Way to the Next Millennium?On-Kwok Lai